Blood Pressure Pills ‘Raise Risk of Fatal Fall’
February 27th, 2014Warning: Nothing that appears on Cryptogon should be considered medical advice.
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Via: Telegraph:
Millions of older people taking high-blood pressure tablets, like beta-blockers, may be doing themselves more harm than good because the pills increase the risk of fatal falls, scientists have warned.
Yale University has discovered that the risk of dying from a fall when taking tablets rises by 40 per cent over three years – similar to the risk of dying from a heart attack or stroke over the same period.
Thumbs up to my doctor who, over two years ago, did NOT put my elderly mother on blood pressure medication, stating that the risk of a fall would be worse than the risk of treating her. Good to see this corroborated.
Recently, she started taking L-Arginine with great results. It has other benefits as well.
L-arginine: What You Need to Know
http://health.howstuffworks.com/wellness/natural-medicine/alternative/l-arginine.htm
A Cheap Way To Protect Ourselves from Radiation?
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/02/cheap-way-protect-radiation.html
from 2005:
New blood-pressure guidelines pay off — for drug companies
For years, doctors considered 120/80 to be ideal and anything under 140 to be OK. But a change took place in May 2003, when American doctors got new advice from a government-sanctioned medical panel called the Joint National Committee on Prevention, Detection, Evaluation, and Treatment of High Blood Pressure.
Systolic pressure as low as 120 could be unsafe, the panel said. It also established a new condition, called “prehypertension,” systolic pressure from 120 to 139, and said millions more people should take hypertension drugs to save their lives.
“It used to be your age plus 100 was perfectly OK,” Godden said. “Somehow, now, if you’re a 140, this is high blood pressure.”
http://seattletimes.com/html/health/sick1.html
The Seventh Report of the Joint National Committee on Prevention, Detection, Evaluation, and Treatment of High Blood Pressure (JNC 7)
Conflicts of Interest: Financial Disclosure
https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/guidelines/hypertension/disclose.htm
Now we have ‘new’ BP guidelines, published in December 2013. Here’s what a Cochrane reviewer has to say about them:
A call to retract the JNC-8 hypertension guidelines
http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2014/01/call-retract-jnc8-hypertension-guidelines.html